Old proverb: "To speak the names of the departed is to make them live again."

Monday, December 26, 2011

Iowa Cousins Complete Move In Time for Christmas

It was a close call, but on Dec. 23 Matt and Emilie Fieg Harvey and family completed their move into a brand new home in Grimes, Iowa, just in time for the arrival of Santa Claus.

The home, a three-story affair in an upscale, family-oriented Des Moines suburb, is located just a mile from grandmother Karen White Fieg's house and abuts the elementary school that the eldest of the three children, Paige, 4, will attend next year.  The children will actually attend public schools where Emilie and Matt were first introduced and will be able to walk to school through the 12th grade.

Neighbors in the cul-de-sac told the Harveys that Paige and her siblings Hanna, 2, and Michael, a newborn, bring to 44 the number of children under age 10 who live on their short little street.

If Matt, better known to friends and family as Harv, is intimated by the many responsibilities that come with financing the property, he has yet to betray it. Harv is an information technology specialist for The Principal Financial Group, a financial planning and investment firm with $318.8 billion in assets worldwide.

"I feel great," Harv said. "I feel like I am living the American dream."

At the Harveys' new home, each child has his or her own bedroom and there is a large playroom on the third floor, prompting the children's grandfather, Air Force Col. Ed Fieg, who toured the home shortly before its completion, to marvel at how much more little Michael will have than did his mother when she was born.  At that time the Fiegs lived in a tiny, two-bedroom apartment over a garage -- a remodeled barn, actually -- in Durham, N.C.

In addition to the playroom and an as-yet unfinished 'man cave' in the large basement, the 2,700-square foot structure features a three-car garage, a huge living and dining room and adjoining kitchen with black granite counter tops and sink.  A fireplace dominates the living room but is designed for maximum efficiency as it is entirely electric.

This is the second Fieg family to move into a new home this year.  Kevin and Anne Whiteside Still recently took possession of their new home in Danville, Indiana.

Saturday, December 24, 2011

Survey Monkey Celebrates Big Black Jack Win

Here is the last set of seven Survey Monkey questions from the recent Fiegfamily questionnaire.  Hope you did well!

1. Bresee's public rest rooms were memorable in Oneonta for: 
  • A uniformed attendant who offered towels and fragrance to customers.
  • Lounge chairs, a sofa, ashtrays and telephones.
  • Toilet stalls with a slot that required payment of a nickel to enter.  If you don't remember the pay toilet in department stores and other buildings, envision little kids desperately crawling under the door before an accident happened.  Half of the respondents chose this answer, half the one above it.
  • French style Bidets.  

2. Bresee's is often remembered for its popular "Health Bar," a typical 20th century lunch counter where diners could order not only a tasty and economical lunch, but catch up with the day's events as they chatted with one another across looping, U-shaped counters that criss-crossed the room. Long after they became anachronisms, virtually unique beverages from the turn of the century were still being offered as standard fare at the Health Bar. These delicious fizzy drinks, forerunners of modern soda pop, were known as: 
  • Strawberry, lemon and chocolate phosphates.  Yum!  62.5% got it right.
  • Sarsparilla.
  • Mineral water.
  • All of the above.  

3. The ingredients for a Bresee's strawberry egg cream included all but one of the following:
  • Eggs, which any self-respecting New Yorker should know, though only 3 of 8 Fieg respondents did!
  • Ice cream
  • Strawberry syrup
  • Seltzer  

4. When Frank Bresee opened his store in 1899, Coca Cola had been on the market for many years and contained this special invigorating ingredient, which was deleted from the recipe four years later:
  • Cocaine.  Those people knew how to enjoy life!  Congrats to the 75% who were correct.
  • Codeine
  • Caffeine
  • None of the above. 

5. The beginning of the end arrived for Bresee's with the establishment of Jamesway, a discount shopping center located east of town. When the shopping center opened, a Bresee's executive was caught in the aisles writing down the prices of merchandise. This interloper was asked by Jamesway to: 
  • Submit a list of Bresee's prices in exchange.for the information he took.
  • Leave the premises immediately.  Gee, what grouchy people at Jamesway....  Half of you knew this -- has it happened to you too?
  • Apply for a job because the new store was shorthanded.
  • None of the above.  

6. Anna Perry, an almost iconic Fieg neighborhood personage who lived until approximately age 90, arrived from Sherburne by electric trolly car shortly after the turn of the century, and, having graduated from Oneonta Normal School, became a school teacher. She joined the Bresee's sales staff after she retired from education at the age of 65. Because she never had a driver's license, she typically covered the near two-mile distance from North Sixth Street to the store:
  • On horseback
  • By taxi cab
  • By bus
  • On foot.  Now we complain of having to walk 75 paces into Wal-Mart from the parking lot!  Everyone knew this one. 

7. After divorcing him, Robert Bresee's ex-wife married local educator and Fieg acquaintance Jim Couden, who looked enough like a certain Hollywood matinee idol that he could be mistaken for him. In fact, Jim and this actor shared the same part in a Hollywood motion picture, Jim playing the part as a little boy and the actor finishing the role as an adult. The actor was:
  • Robert Taylor
  • Tyrone Power.  Who's he?  Half of you voted for Robert Taylor -- red herring!!
  • George Montgomery
  • Dale Robertson

Sunday, December 18, 2011

Rose Bowl Brings Fieg Family Hero to Mind

As the No. 10-ranked Wisconsin Badgers, champions of the Big Ten Conference, and the No. 5-ranked Oregon Ducks, Pac-12 Conference champions, prepare to square off in the 98th Annual Rose Bowl Game on January 2, 2012 at the Rose Bowl Stadium in Pasadena, CA, the Rose Bowl heroics of Fieg cousin Bob Stiles once again come to mind.

Lee Majors
It was more than 40 years ago that Bob, step-grandson of the late Max Fieg and nephew of Doris Fieg Holm, was named the most valuable player in the 1966 tilt between the UCLA Bruins and the No. 1 ranked Michigan Wolverines in the 1967 Rose Bowl.  Bob's performance forever positioned him among the pantheon of Rose Bowl standouts,  though it is hard to imagine a more unlikely gridiron hero than the slightly-built extended Fieg family member, who looked not altogether unlike a boy playing among men.

Bob's performance was the talk of the town that year and led to his appearance four years later, playing the role of himself, in a 1970 episode of the Emmy-winning "Bracken's World" starring Lee Majors.

In the 56th Annual Rose Bowl, Bob is remembered as a key component of the diminutive California upstarts who snatched victory from the jaws of defeat before more than 100,000 New Year's Day football fans as Bob was credited with saving the game after he literally knocked himself unconscious to prevent a game-breaking score as the final seconds ticked off.

 A story in The Los Angeles Times written in 2000 said, "The game film shows (Bob) Apisa, a 212-pound (Michigan) sophomore fullback from Honolulu, running parallel to the line of scrimmage, fighting off defenders Dallas Grider and Jim Colletto, then getting tackled by a flying Stiles, a 5-foot-8, 175-pound junior, who slams into Apisa's upper body and brings him down."

According to Wikipedia, "Michigan State was a two touchdown favorite and the consensus No. 1-ranked team, but the undersized Bruins held their own through a scoreless first quarter.

"In the second quarter, UCLA recovered a muffed punt inside the Michigan State five-yard line; QB Gary Beban eventually took it in from one yard out to give the Bruins a surprising lead over the stunned Spartans. UCLA coach Tommy Prothro went into his bag of tricks and called for an onside kick. Kicker Kurt Zimmerman executed it perfecty and Dallas Grider fell on the ball.

"UCLA QB Gary Beban then threaded a pass between 3 Spartan defenders to Kurt Altenberg, who made a great catch that put UCLA on the one-yard line. Beban scored on a short run to make it 14-0. UCLA's small-scale defense continued to play well, but the larger Spartans were beginning to wear them down and began picking up bigger and bigger chunks of yardage on the ground. Midway through the 4th quarter, Michigan State finally broke through for a touchdown, but failed on the try for a two-point conversion and UCLA led 14-6.

"Michigan State got the ball back and began to march down field in the waning moments. With under a minute to play the Spartans scored again and, trailing 14-12, lined up for a two-point conversion attempt. They pitched out to their large Samoan fullback, Apisa, and as he turned the corner, it appeared he would fall into the end zone to tie the game. But UCLA defensive back Bob Stiles ran full speed and threw himself into Apisa, keeping Apisa out of the end zone and knocking himself out in the process."


Bob today is the proprietor of the Hana Sushi Restaurant on Wilshire Blvd. in Los Angeles and in Ketchum, ID.

Thursday, December 15, 2011

Seven Come Eleven - Survey Monkey is on a Roll

Here is the second set of seven Survey Monkey questions recently posted.  Were your guesses among the correct ones?  Take a look:

1. In the 1950s, Don Sherwood's future wife Dolly's dog "Spot" attacked and bit a little boy who encroached too near "Spot's" territory. This little boy turned out to be:

Jack Bresee
Will Bookhout was the unlucky young man.  All but one respondent got it correct.
John Steidel
Bob Roman

2. Though Bresee's Oneonta Department Store was virtually an institution in Oneonta, it eventually became a white elephant as shoppers took their business to large malls and super discount stores many miles from the downtown commercial district. How many years did Bresee's operate before the classic old time department store went the way of so many others like it in city after city across the nation?

25 years
40 years
60 years
100 years is a long time.  It was tied with 60 years, not such a long time.


3. Lothar Fieg was chairman of the city service board when he oversaw the development of and laid the cornerstone for the construction of Oneonta's water filtration plant on East Street. To this day, Lothar's name appears on a plaque in the building, along with other city notables who were involved at the project's inception, including the man for whom the building is named:
Don Sherwood
Albert Ferrone
Mayor Roger G. Hughes was the man, as over half of you knew.  What, are you from Oneonta or something?
Frank Bresee


4. Because of her regal bearing, culture and position in the community, this woman's hiring by Bresee's as a sales associate in the fashions department was a matter of pride not only for the Bresee brothers but for co-workers Marina Fieg and others of a more common station. This 1936 graduate of Hartwick College was:

Mrs. Albert Ferrone
Mrs. Robert Taylor
Mrs. Roger G. Hughes is correct, though every person received at least one vote.
Mrs. Don Sherwood


5. After the death of Mayor Roger G. Hughes, his wife Nella:

Left town for Florida and was never heard from again.
Became the first woman to be elected mayor.
Remarried and became the new Mrs. Don Sherwood after he divorced his first wife Dolly.
Retired in Oneonta, dying last year at age 95.  The vast majority knew this one -- what, are you from Oneonta or something?

6. Bresee's Oneonta Department Store made headlines when:

Zippy, a popular television chimpanzee, made an appearance there in 1955.
An second floor escalator was added in 1952.
The original 19th century red brick front was covered by an aluminum facade in 1959.
All of the above.   That was one hoppin' department store as over 71% of you knew.  I suspect that you are from Oneonta or something.


7. At the age of 4, Greg Fieg was riding down the escalator with his mother when the contraption malfunctioned and abruptly halted, nearly throwing him and a half dozen other riders down its sharp folding beltway steps. The lad was prevented from a serious fall when:

He and his mother Marina stepped off the bottom step just as the machinery failed.
He was hurled into the heavy black trusses of two nuns riding in front of him.
His mother's companion caught him by his little necktie.  This must have become family lore as it was the most popular answer.
He jumped over the railing to the "up" elevator.

Wednesday, December 7, 2011

Corkerys Welcome Twin Boys

There are two things in this world that you're never quite prepared for: TWINS!

Seamus Patrick Corkery and Sean Gerard Corkery were born to Sarah Fieg Corkery and her husband, Kevin, at the Bassett Hospital Birthing Center in Cooperstown, N.Y. on December 6.

This marks the first incidence of twins in Sarah's genetic line since her aunts, Colleen and Kathleen Powell, were born to Sarah's maternal grandmother in 1949.  (Colleen can prove they are twins because of a photo taken when she was two.  Ba-dum-bum....)

The boys are grandchildren numbers ten and eleven for proud grampa Greg Fieg.

Seamus, 7 lb. 10 oz. , 19 1/4", was born at 3:39 a.m. and is said to resembles the Corkerys and Sean, 7 lb. 12.9 oz., 18 1/2", was born at 3:45 a.m. and is said to resemble the Fiegs. They are fraternal twins.

These are the sixth and seventh infants born to the Corkerys following Maren, 13, Collette, 10, Grace, 7, Karoline, 4 and Frances, 2 all of whom were born in Cooperstown, home of baseball and the National Baseball Hall of Fame. 

It is a bit premature to tell, but the two new arrivals, being both healthy and of good size, project to be corner infielders rather than middle infielders and, it is assumed, their favorite fruit will be pears.


Seamus on the left, Sean on the right
The boys' middle names are those of  Irish saints.  (Their parents opted not to use the names Pete and Re-pete.)

Kevin and Sarah live in nearby Oneonta where Kevin is a financial adviser.  He will continue in this line of work even though his own sons will never get a loan.  (Insert rim shot here.)

Can You Take a Joke?

Twin boys were separated at birth.  One was adopted by a couple from Madrid and named Juan Antonio.  The other was adopted by a couple from Cairo and named Ahmal Abdul.

Years later the birth mother received an envelope from Spain with a photo of Juan, a happy, healthy little boy.  She told her husband, "I wish I had a picture of the other baby," and he replied, "Why?  If you've seen Juan you've seen Ahmal."

Tuesday, December 6, 2011

Survey Monkey Plays Black Jack, Gets Twenty-One, Seven at a Time!

The twenty-one question Fieg family survey created on Nov. 1 is now closed.  Here are the correct answers to the first seven questions, italicized, underlined and emboldened:

1. When Bob Roman launched his career in Oneonta as a dime store chain regional executive, he married Dorothy Fieg and they set up housekeeping in a little apartment on Pine Street rented to them by:

F.W. Woolworth
J.C. Penney
The Bresees of Bresee's Oneonta Dept. Store, correctly guessed by 60% of respondents
J.J. Newberry

2. Jack Bresee, the Fiegs' personable second ward city alderman, was proprietor of a popular Main Street mercantile establishment known as:

J.J. Newberry's
Bresees' Oneonta Department Store
The Golden Rooster - only 20% knew this one
F. W. Woolworth's

3. One Christmas, Oneonta department store proprietor Lynn Bresee offered a $300 bonus (a lot of money in those days) to one of his employees, Frank Fieg's wife, Marina, saying to her:

Don't spend it all in one place.
Don't spend it all on beer.
Don't run off to Las Vegas.
Don't tell Frank. Yep - again 60% of you were correct.

4. Frank Bresee opened Bresee's Oneonta Department Store in 1899 after a successful career as:

A ship-to-shore telegrapher aboard the transatlantic liner "Eturia."
Chief Chef at the Windsor Hotel in Oneonta.
An itinerant, tinware peddler who sold various household goods from a horsedrawn wagon. Quite the success story - and 4 out of 10 got it right.
Oneonta yardmaster for the Delaware and Hudson Railroad.

5. Of Frank Bresee's sons, Mister Phil, Mister Fred, Mister Wilmer, Mister Lynn, Mister Robert and Mister Jack, as they were called, one does not belong to the group of men who, over the entire span of the 20th century, developed their business into the finest department store for more than 50 miles in any direction. The ringer is:

Mister Fred (there was no such person)
Mister Robert (never returned from the Spanish American War)
Jack (never addressed as "Mister Jack" and no relation to the family.) A pat on the back to the 3 out of 10 who got it right -- you didn't just guess, did you, hmm?
Mister Wilmer (no one would give a boy such a rediculous name.)

6. When movie and television actor Robert Taylor came to Oneonta to promote a pilot for a new TV series based on Oneonta artist Don Sherwood's cartoon hero Dan Flagg, in which Taylor was to take the starring role, the reception was held at:

The Windsor Hotel
The Hotel Oneonta
The Stanton Opera House
Bresee's Oneonta Department Store - if you've been reading the blog, you'd know this, as did 60% of you!

7. Before she married, Dorothy Fieg was a legal secretary for Albert Ferrone, arguably the most influential man of his era as owner of a number of downtown Oneonta properties, and his partner John Steidel, whose office was just a few doors from Dorothy and Bob's apartment on Pine Street. The Ferrone and Steidel law firm is long gone, but the offices today are occupied by:

Jack Bresee
William R. Bookhout - once again, the blog yields the answer!  Congrats to 9 of you -- the one who guessed wrong was probably you-know-who....
Robert Taylor Productions
Don Sherwood

Saturday, December 3, 2011

Sign Me Up!

(From a senior citizens' publication:)
Interesting Ads and Signs
  • Semi-Annual after-Christmas Sale! 
  • For Sale:  Diamonds $20; microscopes $15.
  • For sale:  A quilted high chair that can be made into a table, potty chair, rocking horse, refrigerator, spring coat, size 8 and fur collar.  (Wow!)
  • We will oil your sewing machine and adjust tension in your home for $1. 
  • Our bikinis are exciting.  They're simply the tops!
  • Save regularly in our bank.  You'll never reget it!
  • Auto Repair Service.  Free pick-up and delivery.  Try us once, you'll never go anywhere again.
  • Tired of cleaning yourself?  Let me do it!

Thursday, December 1, 2011

On Anniversary of His Birth, Fieg Recalled by his Contemporaries

Former Oneonta Mayor Albert S. "Sam" Nader, the iconic leader who brought about the sweeping Broad Street urban renewal and the eight-story Nader Towers project, and established a minor league baseball franchise that introduced professional players Don Mattingly, Bernie WilliamsJohn ElwayAmos Otis and others, has seen the great ones come and go -- both the famous and the not-so-famous.

The image of Lothar Fieg Sr. will never appear on a postage stamp or baseball card, but when Nader needed a job done and done right, Fieg was the man to whom he turned.

On the occasion of the 125th observance of Lothar Fieg's birth, the mayor and other Fieg contemporaries recently took a few moments to reminisce about the late builder of beautiful and enduring homes, describing him as a top professional in his field.

Mayor Albert S.
"Sam" Nader
"Lothar was a master craftsman," said Nader, 92, in a telephone interview from his home on River Street.  "He did a lot of things for me.  I remember one time he came to me with this old saw I had lying around and asked, 'What's this?'   He oiled it, cleaned it up, sharpened it and made it useful again."          
                                                                                                             
That was typical of the late contractor, who paid attention to details and was unafraid to demonstrate a little extra effort.

The late Mayor Roger G. Hughes, in whose administration Fieg served for seven years as chairman of the City Public Service Board, praised Fieg at the time of the builder's death in 1958 and ordered that the City Hall flag be lowered to half staff.  He noted that Fieg "was held in the highest esteem."

"Lothar was a man of sound judgment, a wise counselor, a solid citizen,"  Hughes said. "... He was recognized as an authority in the field of construction."

It has been said that few were the buildings in the downtown commercial district that did not have a Fieg  fingerprint on them at one time or another, as his company's repair and remodeling jobs were too numerous to count during the four decades he practiced his craft in Oneonta.

Retired Air Force Col. Clifford R. "Roger" Silliman, 92, perhaps the last survivor of the Fieg crew that built the Woodchuck Knoll mansion in Emmons in 1935, recalled that, though he was merely a teenager, he was given the chance to work alongside skilled carpenters and masons. Silliman was easily the youngest of the 20 to 30 men who would meet early in the morning at Fieg's shop at 3 Lewis Street to be handed assignments scattering them to various projects out, about and around the the city.

"He was so good to me, giving me jobs in his company,"  Silliman recalled during a telephone interview from his home near Vandenburg Air Force Base in Lompoc, Calif.  "I always felt that he gave me the benefit of working for him because of his loyalty to my family."

Ray Finkle, 90, went to work for Fieg in 1949 and, among many other assignments, helped erect the 160-foot Elmore Feed Mill silo, the tallest structure in Oneonta at the time.  Finkle also worked on the Duncan Briggs estate house.

"He knew how to handle a T-square,"  Finkle said.  "He knew just how to cut the right angle when you were fitting joists and pitched roofs and so forth.  He was very clever with it."

Finkle was being trained to take charge of the First National Bank of Hobart project when the 72-year-old Fieg died suddenly after coming home for lunch after a morning's work. Finkle was stunned.  

"It was a shock, all right," said Finkle, who had seen his share of carnage as a World War II veteran of the Battle of the Bulge in a supporting role.  "He had been working right along and had never been sick or anything and then, boom!

"I felt real bad because I had worked for him a long time.  He was a good friend.  He was such a good person that everybody liked him."

Besides Thornwood (the home of the president of Hartwick College), Woodchuck Knoll and the home of Briggs Lumber Co. president Duncan Briggs, Fieg erected the Wycoff Florist owner's home on 
Country Club Road, the Upstate Baptist Home for Children in Portlandville, the Russell home on Union Street, the Gardner home at Chestnut and West Streets, and the Main Street Baptist Church expansion, to name a few.  He and Mayor Hughes collaborated on planning, financing and construction of a new city water filtration plant on East Street which today bears Hughes' name.

Fieg, who was born on Aug. 11, 1886, also oversaw the complete dismantling, piece by piece, and reassembly of a 19th-century one-room schoolhouse, frontier blacksmith shop and country store, supervising their move from their original locations to the the grounds of the Farmer's Museum in Cooperstown.  At the museum he also built the original display for the world infamous 1869 Cardiff Giant hoax, in which charlatans claimed they had unearthed a ten-foot tall, petrified pre-historic man.

In addition to being chairman of the City Public Service Board, he was a leader on the steering and operations committee of the annual Oneonta Home Show, a member of the board of directors of the Oneonta Symphony Orchestra, twice president of the Lion's club and played tuba in the New York State National Guard Co. G marching band.  He was also a Mason.

As a Lion he devoted himself to providing aid to the vision-impaired, including the distribution of reading glasses to disadvantaged children.  "A benefactor of the blind, he did much for them in his quiet, unassuming way," Hughes remembered.  "His integrity and character will ever shine as a beacon to his fellow men."

Perhaps more important to Lothar, however, were his wife, the former Florence Shields, and their seven children, upon whom he doted.  Often he had a child or two in tow when he toured construction sites or traveled out of town.

Five-year-old grandson Greg Fieg saw the city of Utica through the windshield of "Grandpa's" Willys.  Roger Silliman as a boy made at least two trips with Lothar to the Albany-Schenectady area and Lothar's daughter, Maxine, rode with him to the Corbett and Stewart acid factory in southern Delaware County, where he had been named superintendent when he was only a teen himself.

Maxine recalled that he also took her aboard the Staten Island Ferry and, ignoring signs barring passengers from entering the wheelhouse, persuaded the captain to give them a tour of the helm and explain all its workings.  His curiosity was irrepressible, she said.

Lothar was a friend of the late Oneonta grocer Nicolas Rizzo Sr., with whom he formed a special bond as both were immigrants and were nearly the same age.  He and old Nick regularly chatted when Lothar stopped by the store.  One day he found Nick's boy, Joe, struggling (as usual) with his junior high mathematics homework.

"Let me see that,"  Lothar said to the boy, and took 30 or 40 minutes to work through the problems with Joe while teaching him how to solve them.

"I was real happy the next morning because I had my homework done," Joe, 70, recalled.  "I usually didn't."

Can You Take A Joke?

A man was just waking up from anesthesia after surgery, with his wife by his side. His eyes fluttered open and he said, 'You're beautiful,' then fell asleep again.

His wife had never heard him say that before, so she stayed by his side. A few minutes later his eyes fluttered open and he said, 'You're cute.' The wife was disappointed because instead of 'beautiful,' it was now 'cute.'

She asked, 'What happened to beautiful?'
The doctor replied, 'The drugs are wearing off.'